Articles
The greatest ever FA Cup semifinals?
Apr 17, 2015
Rob Smyth
Sports fans take considerable pride in their ability to recall the most pointless minutiae, yet they are some things even they are not wired to recall. Great matches are easily recalled; great days less so. Even if there are two of three memorable contests on a certain day or weekend, we are more likely to remember them individually than as part of an extended session during which we became one with our couch.
The occasional exceptions prove the rule and one of the most powerful has its 25th anniversary both last weekend and this weekend: the unforgettable FA Cup semifinals of 1990. They occurred on April 8, but are more likely to be recalled ahead of this weekend's semis. At the time it seemed like no more or less than one of the greatest days in the FA Cup's history; with hindsight we can appreciate it was also a seismic day in English football, in which the transfer of power both on and off the field, towards Manchester United and television, began.
The matches, Crystal Palace vs. Liverpool and Manchester United vs. Oldham, produced 13 goals and are indelibly associated with each other. Before the game, however, most of the talk was about the fact the matches were apart. It was the first time the FA Cup semifinals had been split for television, and there was a considerable moral panic about overkill in the short and long-term. Until then the matches had started simultaneously at 3 p.m. on a Saturday, available only on radio, while ITV showed a single live league match most weekends, presented by Elton Welsby. The only FA Cup semifinal to be shown live was the replayed match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest after the Hillsborough tragedy a year earlier.
"It is a poor and unimaginative idea," wrote Peter Corrigan in the Observer on the morning of the match. "The danger of the entire exercise being a drag is not all that slim." Corrigan's view was not an isolated one. "Tragedy has led to telethon," wrote the great David Lacey in the Guardian. "Hillsborough has made it desirable that fans without tickets should be discouraged from turning up on the day, so live TV coverage makes good sense in the circumstances. But a lot of conventions have gone for good.
"Before April 15 last year the idea of the semifinals being staggered in this way was anathema because the impromptu spirit of the competition demanded that teams find their way to Wembley without being fully aware of each other's presence, rather like opposing sets of sappers tunnelling under a ridge on the Western Front."
This time Crystal Palace vs. Liverpool was to kick-off at midday and Manchester United vs. Oldham at 3.30 p.m. Both matches, live on BBC1, were split by an omnibus of the soap opera EastEnders, which was squeezed in even though the first match went to extra-time. There were just two episodes of EastEnders each week in those days, which shows football is not the only thing which has suffered from saturation in the last 25 years [it's now shown four days a week.]
The first game looked like a total mismatch. After a bit of a scare from Graham Taylor's Aston Villa, Liverpool were back in charge of the title race even though they had not quite been at their best all season. Palace, in their first season back in Division One, were 15th and had lost their league games against Liverpool by a combined score of 11-0. They were humiliated 9-0 at Anfield in September 1989, with goals flying in so regularly that their midfielder Alan Pardew lost track of the score. As he sank into the bath after the time, he said to the defender John Pemberton: "7-0. Unbelievable. 7-0!" He was soon corrected.
Ian Wright, Palace's young forward, started crying on the pitch during the game. "I know what my idea of heaven is and it's a place where nobody will ever mention that game again or show a video that even mention the words '9-0' for the rest of eternity," said Wright -- and that was seven years after the event, in his autobiography.
When they met Liverpool again in the cup, Coppell decided to try something completely different. On the Monday before the game, to general confusion, Coppell told the team and coaching staff that that is what they would do. The centre-forward Mark Bright said the general reaction was: "Oh no, we'll get hammered." It was a few months before Italia '90 made the sweeper system briefly trendy in England; in those days 4-4-2 was taught on the school curriculum and Palace had played it exclusively for years. Coppell spent the whole week giving his time a crash course in the sweeper system.
In other ways, their preparation was not quite as thorough. They travelled up to Birmingham two days before the game and, in the absence of any decent facilities, ended up cutting a fence at a school and going in to practice. They were also staying in the same hotel as opera singer Luciano Pavarotti -- if you had suggested on that Sunday morning that both Palace and Pavarotti would become two of the abiding memories of English football in 1990, you'd have been bundled straight into a padded cell.
Palace's main weapon was their strike pair, Wright and Bright, but Wright was out after breaking his leg for the second time that season. He was one of six injured players, a huge number in the days before big squads. On the BBC, John Motson said Palace were down to their last 13 senior players. (In those days teams only had two substitutes.) Even with a full squad, Palace's pre-match odds of 4/1 would not have changed much. It seemed a mismatch of quality and styles: Palace were a direct side, though the fact four of their starting XI -- and the injured Wright -- went on to play for England suggests they were more than just a team of zesty clodhoppers. At the time, that is how they were perceived by many. Bright remembered that, after the 9-0, Whelan said to Geoff Thomas: "Can I ask you a serious question? Do you train with a ball or do you just run?"
They certainly practised set pieces before the semifinal. There was an increasing perception that Liverpool were vulnerable from corners and free-kicks; in the sixth minute of the game, Motson made one of the more prescient comments of his career. "There is a feeling that if they can get at Liverpool it may be from set plays," he said.
For parts of the first half they couldn't near Liverpool, never mind at them. Although Liverpool did not create any clear chances after Ian Rush's early goal, taken with numbing inevitability after a good through pass from Steve McMahon, they kept Palace at arms' length with no discernible difficulty and seemed to be in complete control. Alan Hansen gave Palace a masterclass in how to play as a sweeper -- even though Liverpool were playing a back four. Palace had only mark Bright up front in a 5-4-1, which meant Hansen was the spare man, and for the first 20 minutes in particular he ran the game. "Majestic is the only word I can find to describe Alan Hansen's performance," said Ray Wilkins in the BBC studio.
Even though Rush and Gary Gillespie went off injured, Liverpool seemed to have nothing to worry about. As in all the best horror movies, nobody saw it coming. "The truth is that first half was one of the worst games of football you will ever see," said Thomas.
Coppell was actually pleased with that, even though the goal was irritatingly self-inflicted when Pardew's risky pass went straight to McMahon. He told his team before the game that, even if they were 1-0 down deep into the second half, they should not worry because then "human nature would take over" and the game would be edgy and ragged.
Human nature was already taking over in the Liverpool dressing-room. "If it was a boxing match it'd have been stopped," said Hansen on the BBC's Match of the Nineties. "We were so far in front it was untrue... The one thing you were taught to avoid at all times at Liverpool was complacency. I must admit it was probably me to blame, because I went into that dressing-room at half-time thinking, there is no way in the world we can get beaten here... it just seemed to me it would end up four or five, could be another nine the way it was going."
Liverpool kicked off for the second half; within 16 seconds Palace were level. The right-back John Pemberton -- who Coppell had told not to go too far forward -- intercepted a pass and went on an astonishing surge down the wing. His fizzing cross was diverted to the left wing-back John Salako, whose excellent volley was saved brilliant by the legs of Bruce Grobbelaar. It deflected to Bright, who smashed a volley into the net.
Goals change games, but rarely to this extent. "After that goal we were never the same again," said Hansen. He was talking about the game but, 25 years ago, his comment could refer to something broader.
Wright, on the Palace bench, burst into tears when they equalised. After that, he said, the match was "one long bawling session." Coppell was right about how the game might pan out. He just got the timings wrong. It was ragged and desperate from the moment Palace equalised and, even in the rare spells when chances weren't being created, neither defence looked remotely comfortable. Liverpool's increasing discomfort was reflected after an hour when the substitute Barry Venison, under no pressure, shanked a clearance out of play and fell over in the same movement.
Liverpool, not helped by the departure of the tall Gillespie, started to have all kinds of problems with Palace's set pieces. When they failed to clear one in the 70th minute, Gary O'Reilly rattled Palace ahead. For 11 minutes, an almighty shock was on. Then McMahon blasted an exhilarating equaliser after a clever free-kick involving the substitutes Steve Staunton and Venison. Less than a minute after the kick off, Liverpool were given a penalty by George Courtney when Staunton's trailing leg was unwittingly clipped by Pemberton, the cruellest twist after his run had created the equaliser. John Barnes put it away with ease. Pemberton pushed the referee Courtney and looked overwhelmed with distress before, during and after the penalty for five minutes at least.
Copyright - ESPN
Then Palace equalised out of nothing in the 88th minute. It came from another set piece. After an almighty scramble which left the penalty area looking like a Wild West Saloon, Andy Gray appeared out of nowhere to cheekily head the ball in from two yards despite the presence of four Liverpool players on the line.
"Liverpool were creaking every time we had a set piece," said Thomas. Palace had two more in the remaining two minutes of normal time, and both almost won the match. Thorn headed Gray's free-kick against the bar, with Liverpool's numbed defenders standing and watching him, and Phil Barber's free-kick from the wing dropped straight into the net but was disallowed for a foul on Grobbelaar.
Grobbelaar was having one of his sporadic shockers and came for set pieces with all the conviction of a drunk chasing a balloon. Liverpool were all over the place defensively. Nobody symbolised the disarray quite like Hansen, who had started the game majestically. Normally his serene, elegant authority was such that, as the saying goes, he could have played with a cigar on. Now he looked like Dot Cotton trembling over her first fag of the day. He ended up on the floor for both the second and third Palace goals, his knees dirty for one of the few times in his career, and had a peculiar own goal disallowed in extra-time for a foul on Glenn Hysen.
Hansen spoke of complacency, though watching the game back it seems less that and more a textbook case of a dramatic, unexpected goal shocking one team and empowering another. Liverpool were suddenly thrust into a fight for life that they could not have foreseen. As the match progressed, they became so freaked out by their own vulnerability at set pieces that it started to perpetuate itself. The winning goal came, inevitably from another set piece. It was a triumph of redemption within the game both for Pardew, who gave away the first goal, and Thorn, who hit the bar in the 90th minute.
First Thorn smashed a wonderful, flat long pass to Bright, who won a corner; then, when the corner was clipped teasingly towards the near post by Gray, Thorn flicked it on perfectly towards the centre of the six-yard box. In those days the near-post corner -- now almost extinct -- was among the most popular set-piece tactics of all, perfected by Arsenal and Steve Bould. Palace worked on it constantly. "My job," said Pardew, "was just to finish in the middle of the goal and to take everything that was in the way into the goal with me." He overpowered Hansen to head Palace in front from a few yards.
Hansen didn't finish on the floor this time, but his momentum did knock Grobbelaar over. Pardew's previous FA Cup goal had been seven years earlier for Corinthian Casuals. He may have thought it was 7-0 at Anfield, but he certainly knew the score this time. Palace had reached the first final in their history with a victory that was almost beyond comprehension, a triumph of the human spirit. The Times called it "the most dramatic FA Cup semifinal in living memory."
For Liverpool, it was the completion of an unwelcome treble: for the third consecutive season, they missed out on a potential double. In 1988 they lost the FA Cup final to Wimbledon, in 1989 they lost the title to Arsenal and Michael Thomas, and in 1990 they were beaten by Palace. Somewhat cruelly, Hansen said they were "forever blowing Doubles."
Palace's jaw-dropping win continued what Motson described as "the year of the underdog." In the world of boxing Mike Tyson was beaten by Buster Douglas, England's cricket team astonished everyone and won a Test match in the West Indies for the first time in 16 years... and then there was Oldham, the second division side who spent the 1989-90 season committing "merciless gianticide," to use Dan Turner's expression from When Saturday Comes.
Rob Smyth
Sports fans take considerable pride in their ability to recall the most pointless minutiae, yet they are some things even they are not wired to recall. Great matches are easily recalled; great days less so. Even if there are two of three memorable contests on a certain day or weekend, we are more likely to remember them individually than as part of an extended session during which we became one with our couch.
The occasional exceptions prove the rule and one of the most powerful has its 25th anniversary both last weekend and this weekend: the unforgettable FA Cup semifinals of 1990. They occurred on April 8, but are more likely to be recalled ahead of this weekend's semis. At the time it seemed like no more or less than one of the greatest days in the FA Cup's history; with hindsight we can appreciate it was also a seismic day in English football, in which the transfer of power both on and off the field, towards Manchester United and television, began.
The matches, Crystal Palace vs. Liverpool and Manchester United vs. Oldham, produced 13 goals and are indelibly associated with each other. Before the game, however, most of the talk was about the fact the matches were apart. It was the first time the FA Cup semifinals had been split for television, and there was a considerable moral panic about overkill in the short and long-term. Until then the matches had started simultaneously at 3 p.m. on a Saturday, available only on radio, while ITV showed a single live league match most weekends, presented by Elton Welsby. The only FA Cup semifinal to be shown live was the replayed match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest after the Hillsborough tragedy a year earlier.
"It is a poor and unimaginative idea," wrote Peter Corrigan in the Observer on the morning of the match. "The danger of the entire exercise being a drag is not all that slim." Corrigan's view was not an isolated one. "Tragedy has led to telethon," wrote the great David Lacey in the Guardian. "Hillsborough has made it desirable that fans without tickets should be discouraged from turning up on the day, so live TV coverage makes good sense in the circumstances. But a lot of conventions have gone for good.
"Before April 15 last year the idea of the semifinals being staggered in this way was anathema because the impromptu spirit of the competition demanded that teams find their way to Wembley without being fully aware of each other's presence, rather like opposing sets of sappers tunnelling under a ridge on the Western Front."
This time Crystal Palace vs. Liverpool was to kick-off at midday and Manchester United vs. Oldham at 3.30 p.m. Both matches, live on BBC1, were split by an omnibus of the soap opera EastEnders, which was squeezed in even though the first match went to extra-time. There were just two episodes of EastEnders each week in those days, which shows football is not the only thing which has suffered from saturation in the last 25 years [it's now shown four days a week.]
The first game looked like a total mismatch. After a bit of a scare from Graham Taylor's Aston Villa, Liverpool were back in charge of the title race even though they had not quite been at their best all season. Palace, in their first season back in Division One, were 15th and had lost their league games against Liverpool by a combined score of 11-0. They were humiliated 9-0 at Anfield in September 1989, with goals flying in so regularly that their midfielder Alan Pardew lost track of the score. As he sank into the bath after the time, he said to the defender John Pemberton: "7-0. Unbelievable. 7-0!" He was soon corrected.
Ian Wright, Palace's young forward, started crying on the pitch during the game. "I know what my idea of heaven is and it's a place where nobody will ever mention that game again or show a video that even mention the words '9-0' for the rest of eternity," said Wright -- and that was seven years after the event, in his autobiography.
When they met Liverpool again in the cup, Coppell decided to try something completely different. On the Monday before the game, to general confusion, Coppell told the team and coaching staff that that is what they would do. The centre-forward Mark Bright said the general reaction was: "Oh no, we'll get hammered." It was a few months before Italia '90 made the sweeper system briefly trendy in England; in those days 4-4-2 was taught on the school curriculum and Palace had played it exclusively for years. Coppell spent the whole week giving his time a crash course in the sweeper system.
In other ways, their preparation was not quite as thorough. They travelled up to Birmingham two days before the game and, in the absence of any decent facilities, ended up cutting a fence at a school and going in to practice. They were also staying in the same hotel as opera singer Luciano Pavarotti -- if you had suggested on that Sunday morning that both Palace and Pavarotti would become two of the abiding memories of English football in 1990, you'd have been bundled straight into a padded cell.
Palace's main weapon was their strike pair, Wright and Bright, but Wright was out after breaking his leg for the second time that season. He was one of six injured players, a huge number in the days before big squads. On the BBC, John Motson said Palace were down to their last 13 senior players. (In those days teams only had two substitutes.) Even with a full squad, Palace's pre-match odds of 4/1 would not have changed much. It seemed a mismatch of quality and styles: Palace were a direct side, though the fact four of their starting XI -- and the injured Wright -- went on to play for England suggests they were more than just a team of zesty clodhoppers. At the time, that is how they were perceived by many. Bright remembered that, after the 9-0, Whelan said to Geoff Thomas: "Can I ask you a serious question? Do you train with a ball or do you just run?"
They certainly practised set pieces before the semifinal. There was an increasing perception that Liverpool were vulnerable from corners and free-kicks; in the sixth minute of the game, Motson made one of the more prescient comments of his career. "There is a feeling that if they can get at Liverpool it may be from set plays," he said.
For parts of the first half they couldn't near Liverpool, never mind at them. Although Liverpool did not create any clear chances after Ian Rush's early goal, taken with numbing inevitability after a good through pass from Steve McMahon, they kept Palace at arms' length with no discernible difficulty and seemed to be in complete control. Alan Hansen gave Palace a masterclass in how to play as a sweeper -- even though Liverpool were playing a back four. Palace had only mark Bright up front in a 5-4-1, which meant Hansen was the spare man, and for the first 20 minutes in particular he ran the game. "Majestic is the only word I can find to describe Alan Hansen's performance," said Ray Wilkins in the BBC studio.
Even though Rush and Gary Gillespie went off injured, Liverpool seemed to have nothing to worry about. As in all the best horror movies, nobody saw it coming. "The truth is that first half was one of the worst games of football you will ever see," said Thomas.
Coppell was actually pleased with that, even though the goal was irritatingly self-inflicted when Pardew's risky pass went straight to McMahon. He told his team before the game that, even if they were 1-0 down deep into the second half, they should not worry because then "human nature would take over" and the game would be edgy and ragged.
Human nature was already taking over in the Liverpool dressing-room. "If it was a boxing match it'd have been stopped," said Hansen on the BBC's Match of the Nineties. "We were so far in front it was untrue... The one thing you were taught to avoid at all times at Liverpool was complacency. I must admit it was probably me to blame, because I went into that dressing-room at half-time thinking, there is no way in the world we can get beaten here... it just seemed to me it would end up four or five, could be another nine the way it was going."
Liverpool kicked off for the second half; within 16 seconds Palace were level. The right-back John Pemberton -- who Coppell had told not to go too far forward -- intercepted a pass and went on an astonishing surge down the wing. His fizzing cross was diverted to the left wing-back John Salako, whose excellent volley was saved brilliant by the legs of Bruce Grobbelaar. It deflected to Bright, who smashed a volley into the net.
Goals change games, but rarely to this extent. "After that goal we were never the same again," said Hansen. He was talking about the game but, 25 years ago, his comment could refer to something broader.
Wright, on the Palace bench, burst into tears when they equalised. After that, he said, the match was "one long bawling session." Coppell was right about how the game might pan out. He just got the timings wrong. It was ragged and desperate from the moment Palace equalised and, even in the rare spells when chances weren't being created, neither defence looked remotely comfortable. Liverpool's increasing discomfort was reflected after an hour when the substitute Barry Venison, under no pressure, shanked a clearance out of play and fell over in the same movement.
Liverpool, not helped by the departure of the tall Gillespie, started to have all kinds of problems with Palace's set pieces. When they failed to clear one in the 70th minute, Gary O'Reilly rattled Palace ahead. For 11 minutes, an almighty shock was on. Then McMahon blasted an exhilarating equaliser after a clever free-kick involving the substitutes Steve Staunton and Venison. Less than a minute after the kick off, Liverpool were given a penalty by George Courtney when Staunton's trailing leg was unwittingly clipped by Pemberton, the cruellest twist after his run had created the equaliser. John Barnes put it away with ease. Pemberton pushed the referee Courtney and looked overwhelmed with distress before, during and after the penalty for five minutes at least.
Copyright - ESPN
Then Palace equalised out of nothing in the 88th minute. It came from another set piece. After an almighty scramble which left the penalty area looking like a Wild West Saloon, Andy Gray appeared out of nowhere to cheekily head the ball in from two yards despite the presence of four Liverpool players on the line.
"Liverpool were creaking every time we had a set piece," said Thomas. Palace had two more in the remaining two minutes of normal time, and both almost won the match. Thorn headed Gray's free-kick against the bar, with Liverpool's numbed defenders standing and watching him, and Phil Barber's free-kick from the wing dropped straight into the net but was disallowed for a foul on Grobbelaar.
Grobbelaar was having one of his sporadic shockers and came for set pieces with all the conviction of a drunk chasing a balloon. Liverpool were all over the place defensively. Nobody symbolised the disarray quite like Hansen, who had started the game majestically. Normally his serene, elegant authority was such that, as the saying goes, he could have played with a cigar on. Now he looked like Dot Cotton trembling over her first fag of the day. He ended up on the floor for both the second and third Palace goals, his knees dirty for one of the few times in his career, and had a peculiar own goal disallowed in extra-time for a foul on Glenn Hysen.
Hansen spoke of complacency, though watching the game back it seems less that and more a textbook case of a dramatic, unexpected goal shocking one team and empowering another. Liverpool were suddenly thrust into a fight for life that they could not have foreseen. As the match progressed, they became so freaked out by their own vulnerability at set pieces that it started to perpetuate itself. The winning goal came, inevitably from another set piece. It was a triumph of redemption within the game both for Pardew, who gave away the first goal, and Thorn, who hit the bar in the 90th minute.
First Thorn smashed a wonderful, flat long pass to Bright, who won a corner; then, when the corner was clipped teasingly towards the near post by Gray, Thorn flicked it on perfectly towards the centre of the six-yard box. In those days the near-post corner -- now almost extinct -- was among the most popular set-piece tactics of all, perfected by Arsenal and Steve Bould. Palace worked on it constantly. "My job," said Pardew, "was just to finish in the middle of the goal and to take everything that was in the way into the goal with me." He overpowered Hansen to head Palace in front from a few yards.
Hansen didn't finish on the floor this time, but his momentum did knock Grobbelaar over. Pardew's previous FA Cup goal had been seven years earlier for Corinthian Casuals. He may have thought it was 7-0 at Anfield, but he certainly knew the score this time. Palace had reached the first final in their history with a victory that was almost beyond comprehension, a triumph of the human spirit. The Times called it "the most dramatic FA Cup semifinal in living memory."
For Liverpool, it was the completion of an unwelcome treble: for the third consecutive season, they missed out on a potential double. In 1988 they lost the FA Cup final to Wimbledon, in 1989 they lost the title to Arsenal and Michael Thomas, and in 1990 they were beaten by Palace. Somewhat cruelly, Hansen said they were "forever blowing Doubles."
Palace's jaw-dropping win continued what Motson described as "the year of the underdog." In the world of boxing Mike Tyson was beaten by Buster Douglas, England's cricket team astonished everyone and won a Test match in the West Indies for the first time in 16 years... and then there was Oldham, the second division side who spent the 1989-90 season committing "merciless gianticide," to use Dan Turner's expression from When Saturday Comes.
